This Needs an Ending. And a Middle.

Usually, in the early morning silence of 35 Windcrest Lane, Dianna Jameson could hear his heart. 35 Windcrest Lane was located so far from the main road (or any other neighbors or sign of life that could create any sort of unseemly—or even seemly—early morning noise) that the place was silent as the grave until either Dianna Jameson or her lover, Malcolm got out of bed and started making their own various early morning noises—the opening of doors, the slamming up of the toilet seat (or, in Dianna Jameson’s case, if she happened to supersede her lover, Malcolm in the bathroom that morning, the slamming DOWN of the toilet seat), and the relieving of bladders. Since Dianna Jameson was often the first to rise, she could usually hear the beating of her lover, Malcolm’s heart when she woke.

But this morning was different. When she opened her eyes and stretched her slender form from head to toe, pressing her fingertips against the headboard and pointing her toes toward the end of the mattress, something felt strangely curious to her. Or rather, something SOUNDED strangely curious to her. She concentrated, imagining her ears opening like rosebuds to absorb every sound in the room. At first, she could not identify what unsettled her so. She heard the steady sound of her lover, Malcolm’s breathing—in, out, in, out… She heard the creak of the mattress springs as they strained against her languid movements. She heard the beating of—ah. That was it. She did NOT hear the beating of her lover, Malcolm’s heart (which, as I have previously mentioned, was something she was quite accustomed to hearing each morning).

In a panic, Dianna Jameson pounced on her lover and shook him violently. “Malcolm, you festering corpse! What have you DONE to yourself this time?” (It was well known to Dianna Jameson and her kitsch circle of even kitschier friends that her lover, Malcolm had a propensity for experimentation with anything and almost everything that could cause him bodily harm. He vastly preferred illegal substances for this purpose, with a partiality towards injectable heroin).

Malcolm’s eyes sprang open with an instant, wild expression of guilt and horror. “What? What, woman?” He looked about him frantically, his head tossing in every direction imaginable (other than backwards, since it is quite difficult to rotate one’s head one hundred and eighty degrees, even for experienced heroin addicts), searching desperately for the source of Dianna Jameson’s fervor.

“Where’s your heart gone, you rat? I can’t hear it! What have you done with it?” Dianna Jameson had seated herself on her lover’s chest, her thighs clenching his sides tightly as if she were trying to keep him alive in this way, which, I guess you could say, she was, since he’d apparently misplaced his heart.

Malcolm struggled to prop himself up on his elbows (a struggle because of Dianna Jameson’s location on his person) and peered inquisitively down at his bare chest. Dianna Jameson peered with him, and they both discovered, much to their confusion, that everything appeared quite normal in that region. His skin was unblemished and smooth, and there was no sign that a heart—or anything else, for that matter, had been extracted from his chest at any point in time.

Still convinced that she had not been able to hear her lover’s heart when she woke, Dianna Jameson pressed her ear to his chest. She bit her lip and closed her eyes, concentrating as hard as she could possibly allow herself, listening for the steady thud of ventricles pounding open an closed, propelling blood through heart and veins.

She heard nothing.

With great consternation, she swatted her lover, Malcolm about the head and pulled at his hair, shouting that he was an unbearable fuckhead and if he didn’t figure out where his heart had got to, she would personally see to it that he died a most uncomfortable and gruesome death for putting her through such agony.

Her lover, Malcolm managed to extricate himself from beneath her wildly flailing body and retreat to the bathroom, where he shut and locked the door tightly, slammed the toilet seat up and began relieving his bladder with a sigh of satisfaction. He didn’t exactly mind that his heart was missing. He misplaced everything he owned on a regular basis, and his heart was nothing special. Obviously, he could go about living and breathing and functioning, and of course, doing heroin without it—although the lack of an organ to pump blood through his body could possibly mean that he’d have to begin smoking the substance instead of injecting it, as he doubted it would have the same effect it had had when he was in possession of a heart.

“YOU BETTER FIND THAT HEART, YOU ASSHOLE!” Dianna Jameson shouted to her lover, Malcolm through the bathroom door, kicking it violently to emphasize her point.

Malcolm simply flushed the toilet in response and refused to open the door.

Dianna Jameson, frustrated at the apparent loss of her lover’s heart and not yet ready to take part in the day, seeing as she had not completed her morning stretches, stomped back into the bedroom in protest.